After the Regalia
by JCCeleste
Summary: Thanks so much for all your awesome comments! I've been wrapped up with a fansite for Elantra/MSW fans (fansofmichellesagarawest.wordpress) but after seeing all the supportive comments I promise to deliver a sequel by Mid-November.


Kaylin could still feel the words lingering, long after everyone had left. She sat alone in the forest, struggling with what she now knew to be true. Nightshade had promised she would understand—once she had experienced a regalia—what it was that she meant to him. It was quite another thing to have been its harmoniste, and for Nightshade to have been its Teller, and for them to have woven its story together in an exquisite dance of magic and harmony.

She knew what she meant to Nightshade, but what scared her was what he meant for her. They were part of the same fabric in a tapestry that had yet to be woven, seemingly hand-in-glove of a story not yet finished. But the regalia could not erase Barren, or those others who had taken her in the night. Instead it attempted to write over her past, like someone taking an eraser to a chalkboard and scuffing out just enough that the blackboard could be written on again.

Then there was the issue of Severn, who was also part of her tapestry, her story; his place in her world was not yet wholly defined. Could there be a place in her heart for him, in a way that was fair?

Nightshade did not yet own her heart. No one could claim it as theirs while it was still fractured, still seeking out the pieces of itself that had been too far lost to be easily glued together again.

But Nightshade was present with her now, heavy and waiting; he knew that she knew through their shared bond, and he wondered just how much longer he would have to wait for her to come to him. She sensed his need, so vivid it almost hurt—but he was Barrani, and he had learned to stave off anything that might cut, so it didn't hurt in the way mortals knew the pain of lovesickness.

Well, that was the thing, wasn't it? He wasn't lovesick; he was incomplete, and he had waited centuries to know what it would be, how it would feel, if completeness were even possible.

The regalia had said as much; they had both felt it, they had both known it—Kaylin was his _Erenne _in as much as she could complete him. She was the only one who could.

She took a deep breath and stood up, smoothing down her blood of the green gown unnecessarily. Tomorrow there would be bigger concerns than where she and Nightshade fit, so they would only have tonight. And there were not many hours left before the sun called them to the Dining hall again.

_Calernenne_, she could almost taste the syllables of his name. _Where are you?_

It was a full minute before he answered. _I am here, Erenne._

She turned around. His presence, that she had felt so keenly, had been him in the room; of course he would have not left her. Had he been close enough to listen to her inward conversation?

_I came back_, he said with his classically unnerving voice. _I have been here only a few moments. You called?_

"I think I'm ready," she whispered, because it was too intimate to speak silently.

He padded towards her with the stealth of a panther. "I will not ask for more than what you wish."

She tried to remember to breathe, but now that he was here, and they were alone, and the forest night was their only witness, it was difficult to maintain a calm rhythm of _breathe in, breathe out._

True to his word, he stopped six inches from her, and he cupped the mark on her face with such gentleness Kaylin could almost believe he loved her the way that mortals loved one another.

_Did you not understand? _He asked, his emerald eyes flicking between gold, violet and aquamarine; the first time he had ever appeared to struggle with any kind of emotion. _The story defined our love, our need, the ties we know—Barrani live forever, we cannot afford the love of mortals._

_But I _am_ a mortal, _Kaylin answered, _Or I was born one. And I've never even known mortal love._

He leaned forward, but would not bridge the gap of a couple of inches between them. _But did you not understand? You brought the fragments of the story together; you must remember what it meant._

She did. She stroked the hair that ran down the side of his face, counter to her mark. _Yes._

She felt it in the pit of her stomach, then, that tug of magic and true words, and she brought his face down, bridging that gap that spanned three inches in the world outside, but a gorge in the depths of her heart. His lips, though hungry for her, were gentle, as if he knew how fragile the connection was and he was loathe to break it.

Kaylin let go of trying to understand what it was that he wanted. There was this moment, and their shared bond of true name and_ Erenne_ and for the briefest breath all she wanted was to know this bond on a level beyond the mortal concept of "true love"—true…

She gasped, and he stilled, his lips a breath from hers, his hands pulling away. But she knew why it was that only she could complete him, because she wasn't meant to be his _Erenne _in that way. She kissed him deeply, before the thought could form into something he might intercept, and he responded in kind, letting down that guard he had carefully constructed around himself.

She closed her eyes, felt her marks glow warm, and she plunged into his heart, reaching for the words that he needed to complete his own story.

Nightshade gasped in recognition, but he could not force her out; he was caught up in the tide of her magic, his passion, and the way they had been weaving themselves into each other as they had delivered the regalia in tandem.

Kaylin felt the soft grass like a carpet beneath her back, but she did not open her eyes, and she did not push him away. She used his true name as an anchor, holding fast to that hidden place inside his heart, and she stretched out the syllables of his name like rubber—_Calernenne_—and she catapulted deeper into his heart, his mind, his past. She could see runes glowing all around him, fragments of dreams and truths and hopes that had sliced him into ribbons—but that had been when he was young, before he had learned the price of hoping and wishing for things that could never be his.

She picked at the runes, and tried to bring them together. Her own marks glowed gold and rose in front of her, and she saw that she had been carrying the words, once again a midwife to a story that was unfinished. She pressed them together, his runes and hers, and they formed a string—a series of only five or six words—that while she understood she could not explain. They would have appeared disparate concepts to a passer-by, but they formed a whole that Nightshade had sought throughout his existence, from the earliest moments that he could recognize they were not his.

_Forgiveness. Laughter. Strength. Truth. Discovery. Love._

But these were not just terms flipped out of a dictionary. They were true words, woven of many things.

Nightshade felt fear so acutely it reverberated through her, and she was almost broken from her reverie. She clutched him to her, knowing that it was necessary to keep his heart open; he had to remain with her, because if he shut down the portcullis to his heart, his past and his mind would be lost, and the story would remain incomplete. Whatever else Kaylin was, she was first and foremost a healer.

_Let me do this, _she pleaded.

_You cannot force me._

But actually, she could. Not through his name, but through the intensity of the true words.

_Please, _she said, and she brought him closer, trying to convey in a kiss what words could not capture. Then she grabbed hold of the first word, and held it in her hand, weighing its Truth.

_Forgiveness_ was not just accepting another after the commission of a betrayal; it was the welcoming of an old friend; it was the eraser to the chalkboard that left blackboard shining through; it was an acceptance of oneself, and a letting go of the past that could never be changed.

_Laughter_ was the sound of children, when innocence was still the captain of their hearts; it was the warmth of joy; the celebration of moments that would be lost too soon. But laughter was not yet tinged by their loss, or by fear of incoming failure; laughter was wholeness, beauty; life.

_Strength _was a power not just of the hand or the stance or of the wealth in material things, it was something that resided in the heart. Strength was breaking and coming together again; it was vastness, yet captured in a moment; it was steel and stone and forever, but it was supple like water and clay, and it could change. It required change, because life shifts; to be strong in life was to accept that it didn't always go to plan.

_Truth_ was a many-faced thing. It was pure; unbroken; unnecessary to define with qualifiers because it was what it was, unapologetically. But being able to see truth meant knowing the truth from many eyes, and sorting out the truth from the shadows of imperfect perception.

Nightshade gasped, her presence too overpowering; he briefly felt he should have killed her before she had become this dangerous, before he had let her in so close. Kaylin felt him push against her with the force of his magic, but she expanded into the nooks and the crannies of him, seeking out the cold and the dark; she drove the warmth from her marks into him, sweeping everything else away, and he relented.

The heart of _Discovery _was locked deep inside a dungeon of his past; he had sought, always, but he had been very careful about what he had discovered. Certain things were dangerous to know, for one who lived forever. Certain emotions, thoughts, dreams; certain shortcomings of others were better left in the dark.

But _Discovery _was a taking out of shadows; a test of the mind, a trusting of the intuition of the heart; it existed in the fine line of the boundaries between the things you could see, and the things you couldn't ever fully know. Discovery was triumph and failure and trying again; the exploring of spaces beyond; and of the intricate places hidden in plain sight. It was new, and yet so ancient-no matter how many centuries passed you by, there was always something to discover. It challenged you to grow.

Yet for all of his expeditions, there was something Nightshade had never held in his hands; it had eluded him like the moonshadow escapes the dawn, though he had had several centuries to chase it down. This word, so foreign and yet necessary, had left him always wanting, even when he was a fieflord, lived in a castle, and could demand or win his heart's desire. Nothing had ever been enough. He hated the restlessness of knowing something existed beyond his grasp. It had been intriguing at first, but not now.

However, _Love_ was not possession but _connection_; the binding of two disparate strands into a new whole. Love was truth and strength and joy; it never left you, not with the passage of time or with the failures of the mind to recall the closeness of touch—because the nature of true love was to heal, to make whole again. Love sought out the places of cold and darkness and flooded them with warmth and light; love made everything else worth it, and a life without it was a mere existence, destined to waiting—but not holding: to grasp in one's hands, to keep, to reach, you needed love.

That was what she could give him; she could give that kind of love, because despite all the attacks upon her heart, nothing had dampened her ability to love with every fiber of her being. It was what had given her strength when she had faced down Makuron; it was what drove her to dash to the midwife's guild at all hours of the night and morning; it was at the heart of every magical act she had ever performed—it had all been out of love, the truest love, the only kind she had ever known.

The mark of _Erenne _lifted off of her cheek, and Kaylin understood that it was meant to join these six true words. She had fulfilled her role as _Erenne _in his story, and whatever the future held for them, they would need no mark for it.

Kaylin took these seven words, and held them against her chest, imbuing them with her strength, bringing them together to form a complete word, beyond any in the four official languages she knew. She thrust it into Nightshade's chest, into his heart.

He was pushed four feet into the air with the force of it, but she caught him with long fingers of magic, and set him down gently. He scrambled backwards to the wide trunk of a tree, leaning against it for support, clutching at his chest. He rocked slightly as the magic coursed through him, and as the story he had grasped as a mere child, so long unfinished, now knew its ending.

He gave a shuddering sigh, and closed his eyes.

Kaylin opened hers, and looked to the sky. The warmth vanished from her marks, leaving her in the aftermath of ice and exhaustion. It had nearly killed her, giving so much of herself to this. But of course the worthwhile things always did. She crawled to a nearby tree, giving Nightshade his space, and curled against the bark. He might be furious, but at the moment she didn't care. She hugged herself, shivering uncontrollably, and she closed her eyes to sleep.

Kaylin sensed his presence before she had fully come out of her dreamless semi-coma. She felt the soft featherbed, silken sheets, cool and delicate and far too expensive for anything she had ever known. She jerked out of her reverie, and looked around.

Nightshade perched on the bed by her, one lithe hand gently upon her shoulder. In the predawn light, it was hard to see the color of his eyes. But he radiated something new, and Kaylin was not afraid.

"Rest," he purred. "It has only been two days. If you would eat, I have had something prepared for you." He twisted his body to take a covered plate from a nearby bed table.

"What happened?" She murmured, her voice hoarse from sleep. "I—did we—?"

"It was as it needed to be," he replied. She cursed him in four languages for the Barrani's inability to give a straight answer. But she was tired, so her tirade was brief.

"You gave me so much more than that," he murmured, stroking her cheek that had once been marked. "Thank you."

Barrani pretty much never thanked anybody, so this was either a dream, or he was making one of his twice-in-a-lifetime exceptions for this case.

She felt his smile, rather than saw it.

_Would you like to sit up?_

It was a relief to know they could still connect with each other that way; she had known their bond would not break in the heat of the magic, but it was nevertheless nice to know in the day-to-day world.

She didn't need to articulate her answer; he knew, as he always had, often before she could articulate something herself. He helped her sit, cushioned with an armchair of fluffy pillows.

He gave her the plate, propped on more pillows, and lifted the lid. He had chosen a simple array of cheeses, fruit and plain bread. She nibbled on the bread, still nauseous from the ordeal.

_I will not be here when you wake, _Nightshade's voice came softly in her mind. _There are things I must attend to. Andellan will collect you, to take you to Tiamaris. Tara is waiting. She will protect you._

"From what?" Kaylin muttered, "Besides the usual?"

Nightshade shook his head. _What _am _I going to do with you?_

"Not kill me?"

He chuckled. "Ah, my little one," he caressed her cheek. "You still have much to learn, and I do not think you will have the time. Last night…"

She glanced out the window; the sun's fingers had stretched out into the darkness and pushed away the black, leaving a turquoise blue, rose pink, and gold sky. _I know this is not something we share with anyone, _she assured him, _Anyway, how would I explain? The mark…_

_Yes. _He stood up. _No one has ever done what you have, and others will fear you all the more for it. You will have too many enemies, and not enough friends. I must prepare._

She reached for his hand before he could step away, and she held fast. _Stay with me, until the morning._

He gestured at the window behind him, holding her gaze. _It _is _the morning._

She pulled him close. "I won't see you for a long time," she whispered. "You are going very far."

He sat by her, and now she could make out his features. He smiled in a way that was new, perhaps because he felt a particular joy that had been foreign before. But behind his happiness was steely determination that this fragile thing of joy would not be stolen from him, not this time.

_Ah, my Erenne, I will never be far from you. And you need only close your eyes to find me._

He took off his shoes with a few swift, fluid motions that should have been illegal; did he have to be graceful at _everything?_ He smirked inwardly, still taking satisfaction from her irritation, and Kaylin knew that all was right in the world, for now. There were some things that would never change, no matter how crazy things got on the outside.

He took her tray and helped her lay down, and he held her in his arms, his heartbeat resounding through her chest. She closed her eyes and listened to the normalcy of it, the rhythm of two hearts beating in harmony, and she let sleep take her.

XxXx


End file.
